Whether we have designed and assembled our own equipment or we have bought it in a store, the first thing we must do to know what is the maximum performance that it is capable of offering us, we can use a game to which we We play regularly or we use an application designed specifically for it, as is the case with Prime95.
Prime95 is a free application ideal for testing any equipment and finding out what maximum performance it is capable of offering us, being an ideal tool for computer enthusiasts. overclockbecause it lets you know the extra power that has been gained after doing this process.
How Prime95 works
The best way to test a computer is to force yourself to perform complex calculations and that is precisely what Prime95 does, it calculates Mersenne prime numbers of the form 2p-1 (hence the icon of the ‘application), p being a prime number, a process that can take weeks to perform calculations without turning off the computer.
If we take into account that so far only 34 Mersenne numbers are known and it is not easy to obtain them, Prime95 is an excellent tool for testing the performance of our PC. Leaving aside the interest in discovering these numbers, we will talk below about how the application works.
As soon as the application opens, it invites us to join GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Research) to search for Mersenne numbers via the button Join GIMPS. GIMPS is a project dedicated to finding the Mersenne number, so unless we are interested in this project, this is not the option we should choose.
To perform a performance test on our team, the option we must choose when opening the application is Just street testing. Next, all the torture options we can subject our team to will be presented.
Next we need to select the number of cores to our PC that we want to test, by default the number of cores of our processor is displayed. By default, 6 options are displayed where we must choose the type of test we want to perform.
- Smallest FFTs. This test is ideal for testing L1 and L2 caches and is associated with high CPU utilization and high power consumption.
- Small FFTs. This test also tests L1, L2 and L3 caches maximizing CPU and power consumption.
- Average FFTs. This test is only available on computers with an L4 cache, that is, those that include integrated graphics.
- Large FFTs. If we want to analyze RAM, this is the test we need to perform on the computer.
- Blend. This performs all the upper tests by testing the L1, L2 and L3 caches as well as the RAM memory.
- Custom. If we know what we’re doing, we can create a custom test.
Once the test has been launched, which must run for several hours, it is necessary to check the temperature of our equipment to verify that this does not exceed what is recommended, which means our team has passed the test.
But, if this is not the case, and the temperature skyrockets, it means that something is wrong, so we will have to check the equipment to find the fault and that it is probably linked to the cooling which is not enough to support high workloads During a very long time.
Download Premier 95
As we mentioned above, Prime95 is a completely free application that we can use without any limitations, beyond the hardware of our computer. We can download directly from your website via this link.
The application is downloaded in .zip format, so all you need to do is unzip the file on our computer and run the Prime95.exe file (it is not necessary to install the application).
